Two women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.
Director Kaneto Shindo made Onibaba a couple of years before his 1968 film Kuroneko, and while they certainly share a few plot points, they're very different overall. While motion picture in color were dominant, Shindo wanted to shoot the film in black and white in order for the essence of the story to reach the viewer. He studied under the legend Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu), and worked as his assistant during the late 1930's, and wrote tons of scripts for a number of well-known directors. He later broke free from the Shochiku film studio and started his own company, Kindai Eiga Kyokai, which produced most of his films. With more creative freedom Shindo made his mark in cinema history, and based his new film on a bedtime Buddhist tale he heard from his mother. It also, coincidentally or not, reminds one of an ancient Japanese saying: "What I thought was a ghost was merely dried grass," referring to the susuki grasses.
This is what Shindo said in an interview in 1972,
This is what Shindo said in an interview in 1972,
"Yes, the tall, swaying reeds are my symbol of the world, the society which surrounds people, In Kuroneko bushes are used for the same symbolic end. 〚...〛My eyes, or rather the the camera's eyes, is fixed to view the world from the lowest level of society, not from the top."
Onibaba tells a lot of its story with its awesome atmosphere, the reeds swaying in the wind and the thickets almost seem to hide something malicious and wether it's samurai thugs or a much more sinister truth, it's up to the viewer to find out.
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| Alternative film poster. |
Genre: Drama/Horror. 1h 43min.
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